Melanee Thomas|Assistant Professor, University of Calgary

“Our research shows that women running as federal candidates are systematically found in ridings they cannot win. By contrast, men are far more likely to be candidates in ridings where their party stands a good shot of winning. Worse, this pattern is exacerbated when parties nominate far fewer women than they do men. This is simply unjustifiable in Canadian democracy. There are so many good reasons to run women as candidates — they win; they bring diverse, policy-relevant experiences to the House; they show half the population that they, too, deserve a place in politics. Because of this and because research shows parties continue to discriminate against women as candidates, then the best remedy is to take it to their pocketbooks. With Bill C-237, if parties won’t do the right thing because it is, in fact, the right thing, then they can do it because it costs them to persist in doing the wrong thing.”